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gods from cooking their Ox. The Ox was allowed to cook only after the gods had promised to allow the Eagle to eat its fill of the meat.

In Alchemy the Tortoise represented primitive instinct, and the relationship between divine and natural substance was expressed by the image of an air- borne Eagle attached by a cord from its leg to a Tortoise which was creeping along the ground. There are two well-known fables in which an Eagle soars with a Tortoise in its claws, only to drop the latter from a height. In Aesop's fable it is the pride of the Tortoise, who yearns to be able to fly, that has the fall; while the fable about Aeschylus (who had glorified Prometheus, making him curse the tyranny of Zeus, whose Eagle tormented him) tells how the poet met his death when a Tortoise was dropped on his bald head.

Eagles and Snakes are natural enemies; and the struggle between the most powerful of birds and the most dangerous of reptiles appears in many myth- ologies, expressing the eternal conflict between the power of light and goodness and that of darkness and evil. In Egyptian myth, Horus, as a Falcon, overcame the serpent Set. The divine Falcon was, however, later replaced by the solar Eagle, and the winged disk of Horus consists of the wings of an Eagle and the two ur0eus Snakes. In Teutonic myth, Odin, in the form of an Eagle, nested in the World Tree, while a gigantic Snake dwelt under its roots; and at the "Twilight of the Gods" the Snake was attacked by the Eagle while trying to tear down the World Tree. In Christian myth the devouring of the Snake by the Eagle is inter- preted as the overcoming of Satan by Christ.

More will be said of the significance of the relationship between the Eagle and these various animals in individual studies of their symbolism.

Q U O T A T I O N S

Forbes , A. R. , Gaelic Names of Beasts, Birds, &c., E d i n b u r g h , 1905, p. 270. RV. iv, 26.

s E x o d u s 19, 4. 4 Ac t s 2, 2. 5 Obad i ah 3. 6 Obad i ah 4.

M a t t h e w 24, 28.

BOOK REVIEW

Menaces sur votre vie: L'epidemie du X X e siecle: Les mors subites. By Prof. J.L. Pech. (Gallimard, 281 pp.)

That within the last decade there has been a marked increase in the incidence of, and emphasis on, sudden death due to cardiovascular accidents in relatively young people cannot be disputed. I t has been variously attributed to, amongst other reasons, the stress of modern life. dietary cholesterol, smoking, and failure to die from other causes, such as infection. Professor Pech, of the University of Montpellier (which numbers Francois Rabelais amongst its old alumni), has produced a theory which links this modern scourge to the discovery of anti- biotics.

Briefly, his story is as follows: the antiseptic property of wound-dressings incorporating moulds has been known in folk and military surgery for more than 200 years before they were made scientifically respectable by the discoveries of Fleming and Florey. At the same time, it was recognised that such powerful healing agents were probably also dangerous, and moulds were generally held to be inedible, if not lethally toxic, as well as unpalatable.

134 T H E B R I T I S H H O M E O P A T H I C J O U R N A L

However, at various times in the past (Prof. Pech does not consider clinical reports before A.D. 1600 to be reliable) famine, bad weather, war or revolution have resulted in the spoiling of crops, and the surplus of mouldy grain, rightly regarded as unfit for human consumption, was fed to farm animals. I t was found tha t these animals gained weight more quickly than beasts reared on sound fodder, but tha t their flesh and fat was of poorer quality. Moreover these animals, and the humans who ate them, were prone to sudden death which took almost epidemic form at such times. At autopsy the vessels of the heart and brain frequently showed rupture, and infiltration of the tunica media by a fa t ty material, which might also form vegetations which blocked the lumen of the vessel. This substance, known as "graisse crystallisable" (crystallizable fat), was shown t o be identical with "adipocere" which is produced from the tissues of corpses by the action of moulds, and also with a constituent of certain cheeses. I t was in fact cholesterol.

As a result of these observations a law was passed in France in 1845 for- bidding the sale of mouldy foodstuffs for consumption by humans or livestock.

In the following hundred years cardiovascular infarcts, a theroma and dis- secting aneurysm (which had been described by Virchow in 1845) practically disappeared from the French medical scene, and from their textbooks. They were considered as rare diseases. Cardiovascular accidents still occurred of course, in older people, but these were to do with arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which Professor Pech distinguishes clinically and pathologically f rom atherosclerosis where cholesterol is formed.

Penicillin was discovered in 1928 and developed in the 1940s, and the other antibiotics followed. I t was inevitable tha t their commercial use in the rearing of livestock and the preservation of food should be investigated, and when it was found tha t animals given a small daily dose of antibiotics with their food gained weight more quickly (just as had been found two centuries earlier with mouldy grain) the use of this method was assured from 1950 onwards.

Between 1956 and 1960 a French veterinary surgeon, Dr. Sergent, who was employed in the inspection of carcases of animals slaughtered for human consumption, noticed that many of them showed atheromatous lesions of the large arteries. This had not been demonstrated in similar observations made in 1922.

Meanwhile the death-rate from cardiovascular accidents in younger adults continued to rise in the civilized countries, and causes were sought. Recently, cholesterol-containing foods and saturated fa t ty acids have come under heavy fire, especially in America, and diets low in these substances are all the rage, notwithstanding tha t our Victorian ancestors ate diets far heavier in cholesterol than any we see today.

But if Professor Pech is right, such precautions are in vain, for the cholesterol is produced from the victim's own tissues by the action of--what? Not by moulds themselves, of course, nor yet by detectable antibiotics. The law in France is tha t animals are not given antibiotics for two days prior to slaughter. The carcases demonstrate no antibiotic activity, and the substances are therefore held to have disappeared. But it does not follow from this tha t their effect on the animal has left no trace, and homceopaths should be particularly aware of this. For instance, we know from the work of Bach and Wheeler tha t a change in the bowel flora denotes a change in the whole person. Conversely, antibiotics are known to produce changes in the bowel flora; may this not be either the cause or the effect of the changed condition of the person or animal?

Professor Peeh (who is not a homceopath) suggests tha t antibiotics given over a short period for a specific infection do not on the whole produce sinAster effects. They have their expected action at the site of inflammation, and are

BOO~ lCEVlEW 135

excreted. On the other hand antibiotics (or, as he calls them, the quintessence of mould) fed for a long period to an animal which is not the subject of infection, and therefore has no inflammatory focus, act where the oxygen concentration is highest, tha t is, in the most important arteries of the body.

This is the main point of the book. The author does not exclude any other factors, such as specific sensitivity of certain people to antibiotics. He does not deny the great medical benefits which have been derived from these substances, but urges that their dietary use should be strictly controlled in the future, ff a still greater increase in the number of cardiovascular disasters is to be avoided.

I t may be wondered why this work has been published as a popular book for the lay public, and I think there are three reasons for this. One, unfor- tunately, is tha t it runs counter to powerful and established commercial interests. A second is tha t though the writer is an eminent and well-qualified man his data are derived mainly from historical research and some observation, rather than from the statistics and controlled animals experiments so dear to modern science. (Nevertheless, if his theory is true, the lat ter should not be so difficult to obtain.) Lastly, the author considered the mat ter to be of such urgency that he preferred to publish it in popular form rather than wait to obtain the scientific verification necessary for a more learned work.

Be tha t as it may, it makes very easy reading-- too easy, perhaps, for it to be taken seriously. One could have wished the references to have been more definite. What, for instance, was the exact date and wording of the law passed in 1845 forbidding the sale of mouldy foodstuffs? What was the title of Virchow's treatise on the diseases of blood vessels? One of the appendices is a biographical index of every name mentioned in the t e x t - - a bibliography would have been much more useful. These omissions and the lurid cover will not win for the book the consideration it deserves.

For it deserves consideration. M.H.

ADDITIONAL COMMENT. Extracts communicated by Dr. R. Zissu of Paris. From: Les Annales de la Nutrition et de l'Alimentation, Vol. X, Nos. 5 and 6,

1956, p. 143. Caleb--' 'Inner Mechanisms." We know that the N.D.A. content of cellular nuclei is rigorously constant.

Thus, a lowering of the level of desoxyribonucleic acid is indicated by a diminu. tion in the number of nuclei. This leads one to think tha t aureomycin provokes either a reduction in the number of hepatic cells, or a decrease in the relative importance of the nuclei of these same cells. In the first case, aureomycin would play a true antibiotic role, opposing the multiplication of cells. In this case, aureomycin should be considered an anti-mitotic agent. In the second ease, aureomycin, by reducing the relative importance of the nucleus in the cell, would lead to an altered nucleo-plasmatic relationship. This latter hypothesis would appear to be partially confirmed by the diminution in desoxy-aeid, expressed in grammes of liver; and further, by the constancy of ribonucleic acid.

Be that as it may, in either of the two eventualities (decrease in the number of mitoses, or alteration of the nucleo-plasmatic relationship) we are brought to the conclusion that the use of aureomycin as a foodstuff provokes a premature ageing of the organs. Thus, the total picture shown by these facts does not allow us any longer to consider aureomycin as a growth factor in the true sense of the word, since it does not encourage proteinogenesis, but on the contrary, as a factor of ageing.